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What is the best AI Traffic addon for FSX

I have FSX deluxe and wanted to install an AI traffic package but no too sure which is the best one around.

I would like them to provide accurate traffic at the airports, i.e. to show the airlines that fly from the airports I choose to fly from, for example I would like to see British Airways at Heathrow and Emirates at Dubai etc..

I really like Traffic 2005. It has a couple of utilities that reduce go arounds (a common problem and AI packages tend to make worse). It also is a good balance between performance and visuals and it gives you a relatively accurate representation of real world activity a.k.a. right airlines at the right airports not to mention it is FS9 and FSX compatible - although I have not tried it after SP2.

I quite like the sound of world of ai but do you have to install all the seperate airlines or is there one package for all?

What would happen if you didn't install a particular airline and flew from the airport where this airline is resident. Would you see blank aircraft or would it simply omit these?

Does world of ai have a big impact on performance?

Thanks
Mark

Only the installed flights will show up. No blank aircraft anything like that. If you want to only install certain airlines there is a freeware ai group that allows you to install there package one piece at a time. Most payware packages install all or nothing. You might want to check out www.projectai.com.

Note: installing only one airline will not necessarily improve performance. The perfromance hit is directly related to the number of planes on the screen at once, be it all the same airline or many different ones.

Is ProjectAI a replacement for World of Ai or a compatible extra, i.e. providing airlines that have not been provided with World of AI?

Also is there such a traffic package that will read from real-time ATC/airports and provide the traffic that is actually at the airport and in the sky at the time when I am? Now that would be cool!!!!

Originally Posted by sirbruchie

Only the installed flights will show up. No blank aircraft anything like that. If you want to only install certain airlines there is a freeware ai group that allows you to install there package one piece at a time. Most payware packages install all or nothing. You might want to check out www.projectai.com.

Note: installing only one airline will not necessarily improve performance. The perfromance hit is directly related to the number of planes on the screen at once, be it all the same airline or many different ones.

Proejct AI was the first group to make packages to try and replicate real airlines and their schedules.

World of AI is a newer group, most of the founding members have worked with PAI at some point.

Unlike PAI (and the payware), WoA does not create AI models, does not create AI repaints, does not create AI flightplans.

WoA gathers those items from the best independent developers on the web, obtains permissions from each author to use their work and creates packages to make the installation easy and painless.

The very best AI is always "hand made" - by collecting models, repaints and flight plans and manually adding them to your system.

Second level, but very close, is WoA packages, with Project AI packages added for those missing airlines available.

Third would be a commercial package and right now My Traffic is the one being developed the most, though Ultimate Traffic has the lock on the most realistic schedules.

No commercial package is 'maintenance free'. To get good AI which represents the airlines and airports those airlines use takes a bit of work with the package.

My Traffic does not use real world schedules for most flights and does not always match airlines and airports for real world practice. Out of the box, My Traffic will put Southwest Airlines at DFW and US Airways and United at DAL. That's the tweaking part.

Ultimate Traffic has the very best schedules available anywhere - but updates are only once or twice a year. Ultimate Traffic for FSX has some problems with missing model setups and some schedule issues. Ultimate Traffic does not have new models, though they do have some nice new repaints. UT also needs a lot of repaints added to be at it's best.

The freeware alternatives - WoA and PAI - only cover about 250 airlines, of the approximate 1,000-1,200 world wide.

They have almost all the majors covered, but fall a bit short on the regional affiliated carriers. That area of the flying world is so volatile and changing that it's hard to create a good package, much less stay current.

All of the commercial packages - My Traffic, Ultimate Traffic, Traffic by Just Flight - suffer from the generic repaint issue.

There are simply a lot of aircraft which have not been painted, and frequently some model substitutions are necessary to get AI working. Some packages ignore schedules if a unique repaint is not available, some substitute generic repaints.

Those options are customizable in each program, but it will still take some work to get airports fine tuned to match the real world.

No matter which you use, you will want to add some custom AI manually at some point.

My recommendations:

1) Start with World of AI and if a desired airline is missing Project AI. (Make very sure you only install Project AI with the option to have a separate traffic file for each airline.

They are free - they can give you a good look at how AI works and how it will impact your system. There are always performance costs with AI. The more aircraft your system displays, the more horsepower it takes to keep the FPS acceptable.

There are also issues with AI and approaches, ground behavior, parking, etc. You can test these with the free packages and see if the limits of FS in those areas are acceptable.

2) If you find that the free packages will not meet your needs - research the commercial packages.

I would most strongly urge you to go to the support websites of the three packages and ask very specific questions about each product. What is most important to you - airline ABC, airport XYZA.

You may need details and screen shots much more detailed than the answers you will get on a general forum like this one to meet your expectations.

What do I have? I own all three commercial packages and have each available as standalone AI for testing, along with standalone WoA and PAI setups.

For my personal flying, I use Ultimate Traffic as my base, but not for airlines available from World of AI and Project AI. I have several customized airline setups which I have created with downloading models, repaints and flight plans.

Note - it is not specificed - but FS Live Traffic cannot be updated while you are flying. The system works by downloading a snapshot of the flying traffic in the US. You then must create a traffic.BGL file for FS. Then you start FS.

If a line of thunderstorms closes KATL while you are flying, FS Live Traffic cannot update all the diversions.

That is a limitation on how Flight Simulator works, not the data source. The flight plans for the AI traffic must be fixed and compiled into a traffic.bgl scenery file before you open FS. You are stuck with the fixed flight plans for the duration of your FS session.

But FS Live Traffic is much closer to reality than anything else - especially when bad weather causes problems and slow downs in the US system.

FS Live Traffic and any similar program will most likely never be available outside the US.

The problem is not the company - but the source data.

Europe is a good example. To make the data such a system would need available, all the many countries of Europe would have to make their ATC subordinate to a European wide central system, including all their individual country regulations for airlines.

So that each airline and each aircraft would report data in identical formats, in one language to a common location.